


Pawn to Rook

by K_dAzrael



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-04
Updated: 2010-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_dAzrael/pseuds/K_dAzrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce is back and Damian is not happy about being usurped by Tim. Dick tries to stay out of it... then doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pawn to Rook

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: For [](http://suki-blue.livejournal.com/profile)[**suki_blue**](http://suki-blue.livejournal.com/) and [](http://hughes-hercules.livejournal.com/profile)[**hughes_hercules**](http://hughes-hercules.livejournal.com/) who wanted to see this scenario. Thanks to H-H for coming up with Damian's new crimefighter name (and mook-related lulz), and [](http://jbadgr.livejournal.com/profile)[**jbadgr**](http://jbadgr.livejournal.com/) for drawing and colouring a sketch of Dami in his bitchin' new costume, [see here!](http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt338/JBadgr/JBadgr%20Fanart/JBadgrrookDesign1.jpg)

  
**New York**

Dick shot his grapple for the last time that night, clanging onto the fire escape of his own apartment building and scrambling up easily. He felt light in a way that had nothing to do with losing the cumbersome cape. Bruce had returned and all was well with the world – New York still had its fair share of violent crime, but Dick was glad to be back.

He pushed up his window sash and slipped in to the newly rented apartment. The moment his feet touched the floorboards a lamp clicked on and revealed Damian standing in a corner of the room in his civilian clothes.

"He took back Drake!" Damian began in outraged tones, launching in without even a greeting. "He says I'm not 'street ready'. I was ready enough when he wasn't around!"

"Damian..." Dick sighed, putting his hands on his hips for want of something better to do. His first instinct was still to cross the room and offer some gesture of comfort, but he had long since learned that touching Damian when the kid was in a good mood was risky – trying it when he was feeling angry and vulnerable, just downright suicidal.

The younger man's brow puckered as he looked up at Dick. "You said it was a _joke_ that he wouldn't want me as his Robin. Why did you say that when you knew it was the truth?"

"Damian, I didn't know... honestly. I mean I knew Bruce could be..." Dick pinched the bridge of his nose over his domino mask and didn't finish the sentence. "I just hoped he would be different with you. I thought maybe he'd have reason to at least _try_ to make the partnership work."

Damian crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. "What am _I_ supposed to do now?"

"Wait a minute... what – _exactly_ – did your dad say?"

"That I can stay at the manor and I can train. He wants me to go to school – with civilians! Meanwhile Drake is strutting around in an ugly, impractical version of _my_ uniform and I'm not even allowed to punch his smug face!"

Dick pursed his lips to suppress a laugh. "Look, I know it's a step down, but you're not even twelve yet. Let Tim help Bruce out for a while and then when the time comes–"

"You don't understand, Grayson – my father is grooming him to be Batman. Drake wants to _steal_ my inheritance, and my father wants to let him! He never wanted me in the first place, Drake is the one he has figured into all his future plans."

"It's not like that."

"Isn't it? They want to put me off my game – to bench me. How am I supposed to keep up my combat skills just working out in a gym?"

"Maybe Tim will spar with you?" Dick expected a 'Tt!' in response, but the sound Damian made was a sort of animal growl. Unconsciously, Dick made a 'stand down' gesture. "Look, take a seat... I'll make some tea. It's not as bad as you think. We'll work something out, I promise."

After putting the kettle on to boil, Dick headed to the bathroom to remove his mask, pull off the top half of his costume and put a dressing on a graze to the back of one of his hands. When he closed the mirrored medicine cabinet above the sink, he caught sight of Damian standing in the doorway with a determined look on his face.

"I want to work with you again," Damian said.

"What?"

"Much as it pains me to say this... you are not a terrible mentor. I think I should continue being your partner."

Dick turned to face him. "You need to understand... New York isn't Gotham and Nightwing isn't Batman. Out here I have different tactics and I'm a lone agent. I need to be independent."

"I could help you. I helped when I was Robin, didn't I?" Damian's gaze became sharp and accusing. "You _said_. You said we were a team. Was that a lie too, or was it another 'joke'?"

"We _were_ a team, but that's over." Dick met the younger man's challenging stare and tried to communicate his sincerity. "You just need to be with your dad right now, ok?"

Damian folded his arms over his chest again. "It's obvious that I'm not wanted there. It's humiliating."

"That's not true. Bruce isn't always good at... being open or clear, but I know he wants to have a good relationship with you. I _know_ he does." Dick hoped that it didn't sound like he was trying to convince himself.

"Yes, convenient for you, isn't it?" Damian's eyes glittered as he drew himself up into that haughty attitude which seemed designed just to press Dick's buttons. "Be honest, Grayson – you're just glad I'm not your responsibility anymore."

"Damian, that's not fair!" Dick snapped, feeling the familiar resentment and frustration rising up within him.

Damian's lip twitched and he suddenly turned away. "No, it's not fair. Screw you and your whole stupid _fake_ family. Thanks for nothing."

*~*~*

**Tangiers**

Dick recognised the voice even when it was conducting a rapid argument a moroccan dialect of Arabic. He slipped through the crowd until he caught sight of the diminutive figure before one of the covered stalls of the souq. Damian was wearing a white tunic pulled in by a fabric belt, his head wrapped in a checkered cloth. His skin had grown a deep bronze in the sun and was streaked by dust.

He waved a hand at the merchant's wares and raised his chin, looking imperious. The merchant was giving him that startled, angry, and faintly amazed stare that Dick was pretty sure had also been on the faces of Wayne Foundation board members and half of Gotham's criminal population when faced with one of Damian's dressing-downs; the look that said 'just who the hell does this kid think he is?'.

Damian eventually nodded and handed over a sum of money, the haggling phase of the transaction completed. He took up the curved knife in its scabbard, but before he could put it in his belt Dick's hand closed around his wrist.

"That wouldn't be a lethal weapon, would it now, little brother?"

"Unhand me, Grayson. Don't make me break your arm."

Dick moved his hand from Damian's wrist to the scruff of his neck. "Before there's any fighting you and me are going to have a talk. Let's go get that cup of tea, ok?"

"I don't have to go anywhere with you," Damian said, tucking the knife away.

"No, I guess you don't, but I took the trouble to track you down – which wasn't easy by the way, I see you found the subdermal chip and pried it out – aren't you at least going to talk to me?"

Damian raised an eyebrow and looked deeply unimpressed. "My father didn't care enough to come himself?"

"I volunteered."

"That was noble of you."

Dick ignored the comment and steered Damian in the direction of a street-side cafe, squinting as the bright sunlight reflected off its white-washed walls.

"So what's your plan?" Dick asked, once they were seated.

Lines of concentration appeared between Damian's eyebrows as he watched the waiter pouring hot water from the etiolated spout of a bronze-coloured pot into tall, gold-etched glasses filled with mint leaves. "I make my own way. Travel, learn from the great martial artists of the world. Like my father did – except I'm starting younger, so one day I'll be even better."

Dick suppressed a smile. "It's not a bad plan. It's pretty obvious you can take care of yourself. The thing is, I don't think it's very efficient."

Damian shot him a suspicious look. "Why not?"

"Bruce developed a fighting style by refining the raw techniques he learned - combining different disciplines and improving the moves to make them as effective as possible while keeping things non-lethal. That took a lot of time. Isn't it better that you just learn the finished product instead of starting over?"

"From who, my father? He has no interest in training me, not seriously."

Dick sipped his tea and then gave him a level stare. "I was thinking... from me. "

"You scorned my offer of partnership before." Damian looked away. "I don't need your pity."

"Look, I was avoiding my responsibilities again, Damian. I didn't get why you were so mad, and I didn't think it could work – then I thought, how would I have felt if Bruce hadn't let me join _him_? I mean, I was just this wide-eyed circus kid – no martial arts background at all, no clue what I was doing, just some day-dream in my head about fighting bad guys and being a hero. It shouldn't have worked, but Bruce _made_ it work, somehow."

Dick drummed his fingers on the table cloth. "And I realised that me turning you down was ungrateful – because I owe it to Bruce, I damn well owe it to _you_, and I owe it to the Gotham of the future, which you're going to need to know how to protect." He paused, watching the younger man, unable to guess his thoughts. "So... what do you say?"

Damian finally looked back at him. "Ok. But I'm not your 'sidekick', understood?"

"Alright."

Damian crossed one leg over the other and threaded his fingers together, resting his joined hands on his uppermost knee, his gaze clear and direct now. "How would it work? Would I live with you or my father?"

"With me at least some of the time. Three days a week?"

"Five."

"Ok, but if you're going to live in The Big Apple with your irresponsible big brother, you'll at least have to be seen to go to school."

"Can it at least be a decent private academy?"

"That depends – can you promise not to get in any fights?"

"I would never engage in combat with a civilian, Grayson – it's beneath my dignity."

"Well, ok then."

"Anything else?"

"Um... you have to eat my cooking and not complain about it. And you have to help with the dishes."

"Tt! Why can't we get a maid?"

"Because it's a security risk – secret identities, remember?"

Damian sighed, looking extremely put-upon. "Very well."

Dick smiled, feeling as out-haggled as the stall-holder as he extended his hand for Damian to shake. "Deal."

*~*~*

**Somewhere above the North Atlantic Ocean**

"I recognise you – you're Ritchie Grayson, aren't you?" the American Airlines stewardess beamed at Dick as she set down the in-flight meals. He nodded in reply and she inclined her blue-capped head towards the figure of Damian, who was curled up with his eyes closed in the large business-class seat ('it's bad enough you won't let me charter a plane, Grayson, there's no way I'm flying _steerage_ unless you have a sound mission-related reason for it.').

"Is he your younger brother?"

"He sure is."

"Oh, isn't he a little angel!"

Dick laughed, softly. "He's a little _something_."

When the stewardess moved away down the aisle Dick reached over to steal Damian's dessert dish, only to have his wrist seized in a vise-like grip. Damian's eyes opened very slightly to reveal two dark, glittering slits.

"Grayson, stop telling people we're related."

*~*~*

**Gotham**

Dick felt himself holding his breath as they entered the cave, Damian walking two steps ahead of him.

Tim turned at the console and gave them both a nod in greeting, his eyes shuttered and face cautiously inexpressive. Bruce came down the steps from the gym area in his workout clothes, a towel around his neck.

"Welcome back, Dick."

Dick wanted to wince at Bruce's lack of tact in addressing him first, he could see the resentment written in the tensing of Damian's shoulders.

"Damian," Bruce said, after a long, evaluating pause. His expression softened, perceptibly, and became something more warm. "When I ran away when I was eleven, I didn't get much further than the front gate before Alfred came and picked me up in the car." He blinked and then he smiled and said: "I'm glad you're home."

Damian stared at him for a moment, then blurted out: "I'm going to live with Dick."

Bruce glanced over at Dick, who crossed his arms over his chest and nodded in reply. "Yes," Bruce said, "we thought you might decide on that." He beckoned Damian with a wave of his hand as he walked over to a work bench and clicked open the catches of a large Pelican case sitting on top of it. "We put some things together for you to take to New York."

Damian approached looking wary, as if he thought it might be a trick. He opened the case and looked into it for a long moment before lifting out the garment that was uppermost among its contents. What Damian held up was a suit, made of the same reinforced, fire-retardant nomex that Dick's own costume was. It was closer in appearance to the black and white one-piece the ten year old Damian had first shown up in, but it was coloured black with steel grey details – panels on the inside leg and a 'v' dipping from his shoulders to the centre of his chest, echoing the placement of the stripe on the Nightwing costume. Like his Robin costume, it had a hood – black lined with grey. Damian studied it carefully, testing the seams, then laid it aside and looked at the knee high boots and the pair of finned black gauntlets. In another compartment he found a grey domino with a beaked nosepiece and a throwing stars emblazoned with a bird's head.

"I take it I have a name?" he said, looking at Bruce.

It was Tim who spoke up: "we thought 'Rook'."

Damian didn't look directly at Tim in response, but he inclined his head thoughtfully and then nodded.

Replacing the mask and shuriken, Damian took out the final item which the case contained. Strapped to the inside of the lid was a scabbard containing a stick – half the length of Tim's bo-staff; longer than the escrima batons which were Dick's weapon of choice.

"A hanbō?" he looked questioningly at his father. "Where's my sword?"

"Handled skillfully, that can defeat a katana," Bruce replied in sagely tones.

They were all expecting an argument – maybe even a tantrum – but Damian merely raised an eyebrow and replaced the hanbō into its scabbard.

"I'm telling you, Damian," Dick chimed in, "all the cool kids have sticks."

After saying their goodbyes in the cave, Dick and Damian left through the mansion. For a few minutes they stood together on the front steps as they waited for Alfred to bring the car around. Damian clutched his case and looked down at it from time to time, pride evident in the flush of his cheeks.

"You were good in there, D. Very civil. I was proud." Dick glanced over at the younger man, who continued staring ahead into the middle distance. "In fact, right now, I'm thinking about ruffling your hair and giving you a _big_ brotherly hug."

Damian's head snapped around: "well _don't_." He looked faintly horrified at the prospect.

"Ok. But I'm still imagining it and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"... You're a freak."

Dick laughed and rocked back and forth on his heels with his hands shoved in his jean pockets.

The car came crackling over the gravel. Alfred drew up and stepped out, holding open the driver's side door for Dick.

"Master Damian," he said as he withdrew to the steps to see them off, "I took the liberty of packing up some of your warmer clothes. I dare say New York will be considerably colder than Morocco at this time of year."

Damian paused with his hand on the passenger-side door and regarded the butler. He nodded and the pair exchanged one of their strange, meaningful stares. "... Thank-you, Pennyworth."

"You are very welcome, young sir. As always."

*~*~*

**New York**

"ETA, R?"

"Thirty seconds, closing."

"Uff!" Dick mostly blocked a punch aimed at his solar plexus and swept the assailant off his feet while the larger man was still unbalanced from the lunge. A bullet whizzed past Dick's ear a split-second before he heard the gun's crack. "Need eyes on the back of my head in this city," he muttered, turning to see the gunman take aim again as three more mooks lumbered towards him from the left, putting him exactly where he didn't want to be – i.e. between a line of bruisers hopped-up on some sort of Venom derivative and the edge of the docks.

A throwing star severed the achilles tendon of the central mook, sending him crashing down on one of the others so they fell like a pair of bowling pins. A dark figure swung down on a line and cracked the gunman's skull with the heel of a boot.

"Out of your depth, Nightwing?" Damian landed and recoiled his cord.

Dick jerked his head towards the oily waters lapping a few feet beyond. "If you'd given it a few seconds more I probably would be."

Damian smirked. "Is that an admission of incompetence?"

"Watch it, newbie," Dick tackled the last chemically-enhanced mook, going for the knee with one of his batons. The assailant fell with a guttural roar and made the ground beneath their feet shake. "Seriously, _watch it_ – that guy you cracked is coming around."

"Tt. I _saw_!" Damian tossed another star and hit the hand that had started groping towards the the fallen gun. He stalked over and started zip-stripping the guy to a one of the anchorage pillars on the side of the dock.

Upon being heaved upright, the former gun-toter woke up enough to start hurling punch-drunk abuse at Damian: "hey, hey kid - what gives, huh? Just who the fuck are you anyhow? The boss told us Nightwing don't have no sidekick."

Damian pulled the strips tighter than he needed to, making the man let out a yell. "He does now. My name is Rook."

"Rock?"

"ROOK!"

Mr. Severed Tendon woke up and started howling while the accomplice he had fallen on tried to struggle out from underneath him. The man Dick was busy securing groaned and then said: "Like the chess piece, Mac. The one shaped like a horse."

"That's a knight you dope," the slightly crushed mook said, dragging himself across the asphalt, his muscles visibly shrinking and throbbing veins receding as the Venom-mix wore off. "Rooks are the castles."

"Yeah?" 'Mac' retorted, "well he don't look like no castle. With that mask of his he looks more like a bird, so what gives?"

"A rook _is_ a bird!" Damian remonstrated. "From the genus _corvus_, like ravens and crows..."

"Aw hell, kid," crawling mook observed, getting unsteadily to his feet. "Nobody's gonna get that."

Dick started to laugh and Damian whipped out the hanbō to return the recovering henchman to ground-level.

*~*~*

Damian slammed the bathroom door as he strode through to the living room where Dick was lounging on the sofa watching the scrolling news bulletin. He put his hands on his towel-wrapped hips and glared at Dick, who guiltily took his feet off the coffee table and put the chopsticks back into his box of reheated lo-mein to offer it to Damian.

"Grayson, is my name stupid?"

"Hey, of course not! It's great name, and a great costume."

"What if nobody gets it?"

"They will, D. Hey come on, you're going to be the scourge of New York City, right?"

Damian frowned. "I suppose so." He sat down and took the remote, changing the channel to a news station he preferred.

Dick glanced over at him. "Don't you have school tomorrow?"

"Don't you have _work_?"

"Your squishy little adolescent genius-brain needs more hours of sleep than mine does."

Damian nodded. "Five minutes. I want to see what they report about the take-down earlier."

Dick sighed and took a moment to reflect upon his failures as a guardian as the news anchors got around to the local stories.

_"And earlier tonight by the east river docks a drug smuggling operation was uncovered by the NYPD with the assistance of returned local vigilante–"_

"–'_Assistance_ of'?" Damian interjected in tones of outrage.

_"– and his new sidekick The Rock."_

Dick eyebrows shot up and he looked over at the space where Damian used to be, hearing the vicious slamming of a bedroom door. He shrugged and put his feet back up on the table. He had a feeling that a lot more of New York's criminals were going to be facing the punishment of a lecture on the genus _corvus_.__


End file.
